Sulla and 666

My last post on the 666 issue should be read before this one, the main point of that, the argument against it referring to Nero stands, and my final theory about Iapetos is still my main theory, but I felt the need to share this observation.

Ancient Pagan Rome had primarily two ways of identifying a year, identifying it by the names of the Consuls of that year was the more standard method, so it seems like the Ab urbe condida (In the year since the city’s founding) date was mainly used to answer the question of when someone was Consul.  In other words it’s a non Gematria/Isopsephy way of associating names with numbers.

The year 666 Ab urbe condita was The Year of the Consulship of Sulla and Rufus and is the year known on our calendar as 88 BC.  Sulla is listed first for formal reasons independent of his being the more well known of these two persons to us Roman history buffs centuries later.  And yet a big part of why Sulla is one of the most infamous Romans of his generation is because of something he did during this year, he was the first Roman General to march his armies into the city, 39 years before Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon.  

This was also the first Consulship not only of this Sulla but of anyone with that name. That point is key, this is obviously not an argument for The Beast being this person who died still in the BC era, but for associating it with his name.  Or perhaps more politically with his actions???  

Sulla was a reactionary not just in the context of his time but by any time, he marched on Rome interfering in the Social War taking a fundamentally xenophobic stance against the expansion of Roman citizenship.  Expansion of Citizenship to those not by blood descendants of a nations’ founding tribe is a key theme of The New Testament, principally about Citizenship in The Kingdom of Israel being expanded to include Gentiles.  However the comparison to this ongoing Roman issue is arguably there in the subtext, Paul evokes his Roman Citizenship, The Philippians had Lus Italicum. None of that could have happened if Sulla got his way in the long term.  In fact Pontius Pilate himself may very well descend from a Samnite tribal leader of The Social War named Pontius Telesinus.

Many of the Italian Tribes seeking enfranchisement during the Social War were based in Southern Italy, somehow them being looked down on by northerners is a problem still to this day after getting tied into Scientific Racism in the 19th Century.  [Sicily it should be noted wasn't even part of the Social War, the Sicilians gained Roman Citizenship with the help of Fulvia decades later.]

Something else Sulla sought to gain from these actions was an appointment as a leading General in the First Mithridatic War.  From which position he burned Athens to the ground in 86 BC.  This is one of many reasons why what New Atheists blame on Rome's Fall should really be blamed on Rome's Rise.  I'm skeptical of the common origin story you hear for the Altar of the Unknown God in Acts 17, maybe it's really there because the Athenians felt there were ancient gods who they may have been forgotten after Sulla's massacre and destruction.

Romans with the same name are documented to have still existed into the early 3rd Century.  Sulla had a son named Faustus Cornelius Sulla who served under Pompey who was the first over the wall of Jerusalem in 63 BC and married Pompey’s daughter Pompeia Magna.  His last confirmed direct descendent was a Faustus Cornelius Sulla Felix who spent his later life in exile in Southern France, he was also a descendent of Antonia Major.